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CallToChrist.com (43)

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Background

Call to Christ (http://calltochrist.com/) is a pre-launch web site that will sell the healing power of prayer to those in need. I have engaged a network of churches that have agreed to pray for customers, in exchange for donations to their congregation. I am targeting three main customers: people who praying for the sick (healing), the dead (salvation), or who have a personal need.

Technology

I am using Stripe as the payment processing gateway. nginx will handle serving the front end web site, from inside of a Docker container, using Codefresh to manage Docker testing and deployment. The site was coded in PHP, but this will be soon migrated to AngularJS with a Node.js and Mongo backend. Wordpress handles the blog.

Digital Marketing Stack



Approach

First things first: I will make the site SSL (https) and containerize it for easy deployment and scale. Next, I'll begin to push Facebook traffic to various landing pages. I'll track the progress and expose the campaigns, conversions, etc, and we'll all learn.

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This should be a very interesting follow along! How did you come up with this idea/niche?

Looking forward to seeing updates and how the traffic behaves!

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man, that is genius!

you could also try and get a google grant, they are giving away >$10k monthly to non profit orgs to spend on adwords.

Also, churches are exempt from income taxes. maybe you could get something like this work for you too.

our local orthodox christian priests prefer mercedes btw, would be nice to grab a piece of their pie too:




p.s.: with all due respect, i don't mean to insult the believers of any faith, just that organised religion is well-knowingly corrupt.

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Interesting. Not sure if Facebook allow you to advertise anything related to religion, but I would double check this with them.

There's a few websites on native that i know this would crush it.

And here's a question I never thought I would ever ask.

Do all the proceeds from prayer sales go to donations for the participating churches?

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Very interesting suggestions! I came up with it when thinking of how to people can be convinced so much about something, they'll pay for intangible goods. I identified this space as rife with corruption, and wanted to provide something that'd be actually meaningful to my customers, although I am an atheist.

As far as vehicles, I just treated myself to an i8:

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Very good point in regards to Facebook. Definitely NOT, in regards to the proceeds. The proceeds go to me. This definitely is NOT charity; the churches are paid a flat fee per prayer request, which is calculated into my costs.

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Awesome idea for sure; reminds me of an article I read on CNN about this -> http://money.cnn.com/2016/02/24/news...l-chapter-one/

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Very cool out-of-the-box idea. If this works, you could also target the hippie/new-age demographic with having someone "meditate for their health/abundance etc" instead of pray.

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Ah, everything old is new again....I'd recommend reading up on the Lyman Wood story: https://www.amazon.com/What-Way-Live.../dp/0964229501 One of his great early successes (I'm pretty sure it was Wood's) was his lucky rabbit's foot campaign-- he got in trouble at first by promising miracles by purchasing a rabbit's foot, but got out of trouble when he started selling prayers instead and offered the rabbit's foot as a free bonus. If you can find the write up on the campaign, it is certainly worth studying....the direct mail piece is out there somewhere, I'm sure.

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Excellent reference material; thank you, all!

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As long as you don't call out the user directly it's fine.
https://www.facebook.com/policies/ad...ibited_content

@dom
Have you tested the concept? Create ads for the target audience + send them to a landing page and see how many clicks you get on the payment button? Would love to see the results of this.

How exactly does the process work, or what confirmation is the end user provided with?

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Ha ha, I need to mention this : https://www.yourmechanic.com/article...y-maddy-martin

BMW's, especially the i8, are one of the highest maintenance car's out there. Not that someone owning an i8 cares .

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Hehe yes. I have a 760Li as well. I've had half a dozen of them, and they are some of the worst cars made. They break down CONSTANTLY. The i8 is under warranty, as it is brand new.

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Hi, there is something wrong in your website. When you click on site links instead of moving to another landing it downloads the php file.

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Thanks for the heads up! It's a known issue with migrating the site. It's being migrated to Angular/Node.js, but I told the developer to leave the .php links in there for now.

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This could work well, especially in the States. Do you have some results on CTR and CR on your ads already?

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No. Unfortunately, my web host (Amerinoc) wasn't able to get the SSL certificate installed, so I had to create a Digital Ocean droplet, set it up in Codefresh, set it up on Docker Cloud, push it to Docker Hub, re-issue the certificate, install Nginx, etc, etc -- the Wordpress blog isn't back up yet (another chore to move the DB and install WP on Nginx in a new container), and it's in the middle of a conversion from PHP to Javascript. Whew!

I'll update as I go.

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Amerinoc just physically migrated the servers across the county. I have a $1,400 credit with them (I pay too much in advance, apparently), but am moving everything to Amazon EC2 and Google Cloud because Amerinoc just has been too much of a hassle. Any ideas for the $1,400 in the meantime would be appreciated -- especially if someone knows something Amerinoc is good for.

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Hey Dom, how are you actually "delivering" these prayers? Interesting project you have going on here. Really interested in how this will play out for you.

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This seems so interesting... how are you planning to monetize this (since people are paying you to give as a donation?) how are YOU making money on it?

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All of the revenue generated from selling prayers goes to him, and he then pays out a flat rate to the churches he's partnered with.

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I know of a company that does something similar. Big coin. Generally a large LTV.

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Hi @domthewop, I'd love to run this campaign on our exclusive traffic sources in the US. PM me to discuss this in more detail. Astro/Christ/superstitious campaigns work really well on our traffic in the US, FR and LATAM.
My email is: cbrughmans@clicktronmedia.com

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Sorry, all -- AmeriNOC was a real nightmare. I've now migrated out to a Docker-based solution, and am converting the PHP into Angular. I'll update.

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Finished the conversion from PHP to Angular tonight, and published the changes to a Docker image which I've redeployed. Next step is to re-hook up the payment system (live credit card processing), and then it'll be good to go for some tests. I plan to use Facebook Ads and Google AdWords first to establish some baselines before I make multivariate changes.

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How many people per day buy prayers?!

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Currently, none, as Stripe isn't hooked up.

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Stripe is now hooked up and working (now I can take payments). I wrote an API backend go tokenize the payments and provide an additional layer of security. Tested it with a charge, and now it's good to go! Todo:

1) Add in multivariate testing suite
2) Capture emails into Mailchimp
3) Set up drip campaign
4) Implement form-drop campaigns
5) Send test traffic

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Here are videos of the first two users.

First video: https://youtu.be/gmFTu1EHG_c

This guy clicked to buy, but didn't finish the transaction (was likely just checking things out).

Second video: https://youtu.be/X5g2ZaBkeXU

The next guy explored around the page, and clicked unclickable things (looks like I need to make these pop a modal for more information).

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Hey Dom, any updates? I'd imagine you should be getting some super cheap click if you're advertising on FB.

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Indeed, the Facebook spend hasn't been very expensive! I'm optimizing conversions by playing with pricing. Certain states are very price sensitive (seems like the Southern states are moreso). I'm also seeing good conversions on Spanish-speaking traffic, so I'm going to make some Spanish landing pages.

Next up, I want to make a landing page that gives you a "free" prayer in exchange for your email, then begins a drip campaign to increase the power (number of prayers) of that request.

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this is a hilarious idea, very creative. I can imagine it working.

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superrrr curious to know the results of this.. do people actually buy prayers?!

Even if you don't want to give the results, at least respond to this message to let us know you havent been struck by lightning yet LOL

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I'd also be interested to hear anything you care to share about this project. I grew up in a very churchy extended family and have put in a bit of thought on how to run this niche online (but as of yet no action).

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Indeed, am still working, and the site is converting (not profitably yet). STM locked me out for a long time (but, strangely, kept billing me), so my apologies for not being able to respond sooner!

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Yeah 2checkout is a total bitch, they need to fix that.

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Hey Dom,

Just out of curiosity, have you thought about implementing this with one of the CRM in our space? CRMs made for these types of offers? I'd like to find out your train of thought between that and using Stripe.

Best regards

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Completely. At least the site is cheap, but if I were paying $10k/mo to be here, I'd be annoyed. It's been a real pain to login and post lately.


No, actually. With a background in software, I tend to over-engineer solutions. I think we're all guilty of that sometimes, but getting to MVP has never been my strong suit. Do you think a certain one would be a good fit?

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Found this today:

http://www.christianitytoday.com/gle...-millions.html

Interesting!

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Absolutely fed up with the login problems here. Won't be checking this thread as frequently going forward.

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Insane.

Curious to hear how your project is coming along, Dom. I was following way back when you started. Switched profiles recently, though.

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Interesting. It could have been a legitimate business if he didn't misslead and hired someone to pray I guess

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Or if he actually built a community around all the people that purchased, and allowed them to respond to eachother's prayers.

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